Tag Archives: ONE

ONE Lesson #4: Raising the Bar

Posted by Steve on

With God behind us, we can do anything (Php 4:13).  But when our knowledge goes too far beyond our practice, our belief becomes a burden because we’re not giving God space to fulfill the promises of scripture in our lives.  It’s easy to acknowledge what God says to us and still live lives that never go beyond what we can do.  As Christians, we’ve got to keep each other accountable, and not just with struggles or responsibilities, but with our faith at its core as well.  If we want to step into God’s dreams for our lives, we have to challenge each other to live in ways that require both God’s sustenance and each other’s support (both are necessary…Lk 10:27).

While explaining how individual’s personal walks with God play a part in their unity as a team, the youth staff at NewSpring Church said that they hold people to a standard they can’t live up to without Jesus and each other.  Leaders especially need to have unity between each other that is so solid that every person’s quiet time is vital to the operation of the ministry.  Holding each other accountable in this way not only makes sure that what you’re doing is always based in, surrounded by, and covered with scripture…it also ensures that your personal time with God becomes not only for yourself, but for your teammates too!

ONE Lesson #3: Purposeful

Posted by Steve on

I accidentally deleted this post from before, so I had to completely rewrite it…I have to confess an unreasonable amount of frustration after I realized what I’d done…hopefully I haven’t forgotten anything really significant!

The best thing a leader can do is NOT to be in front of people, dragging them behind.  The best thing a leader can do IS to be behind people, pushing them to go places on their own.  The primary purpose of leaders in ministry should be to encourage others into their gifts, to help others realize their callings, and to provide others with the means to accomplish what God has laid before them.  Brad Cooper said “People are saved from hell, but they are saved for a purpose.  If they did not have purpose in the kingdom, God would take them straight to heaven right when they became saved.”

Leaders—draw out the purpose in people.

Here are just a few ways we can do this (NOTE – this is by no means an exhaustive list):

1) Empower them. Too many leaders keep all the responsibility to themselves and don’t trust the people they’re leading.  If you don’t put trust in the people following you, they won’t be able to put trust in you either.  Remember than when the disciples came to Jesus about the five thousand hungry men, He told the disciples to feed them before He fed them Himself (Mt 14:15-16)!  Show them that they have purpose that is of equal importance to your own purpose (as it is given by the same God), and have the faith in them that they need to have in God.

2) Help those you’re leading do what you’re doing better than you. YOU ARE NOT ETERNAL!  Your time may be now, but it won’t be always.  It is our responsibility to build up followers of Jesus who not only do what we do, but do what we do better than we do it.  God wants His church to grow, and if we never help people to achieve more than we do, we become the biggest obstacle for our ministry.  You must lead in a way that makes you unnecessary because of how prepared you’ve made everyone else.  Follow Jesus’ example when He told His disciples that they would do “greater things than these;” we should be able to say that to the people we’re leading!

3) Humble yourself. This is the most important thing a leader can do.  The less glory you take for yourself, the more glory goes to God…He is most glorified when you are most humbled.   You are not leading your ministry, God is leading His ministry and just so happened to choose you as His vessel.  When we forget that, we become poor stewards—broken vessels—that end up “sinking” the opportunity He has given us.  This doesn’t mean we can’t be confrontational and confident: Jesus was both, but still willing to humble Himself further than we can really grasp (Php 2:8).  What it DOES mean is that we’ve got to put others before ourselves, and make sure our leadership serves them, rather than demanding that they serve us.

How else can you draw out the purpose in people?

ONE Lesson #2: Sports and Math

Posted by Steve on

The vision that God gives us for our ministry to others is so vital to the life of that ministry.  Without God’s dream for our lives placed in our hearts, we will always burn out and lose focus.  But WITH God’s calling, we cannot STOP being on fire for it!

However…just because God gives you a vision doesn’t mean He gave everyone that same vision.  And sometimes it is really easy to try and force your vision onto others, because you think it’s right and it’s what God wants.  But you can only know what God has called YOU to do, not anyone else.  And forcing your vision onto others results in them burning out and losing focus, because you are not God, and He is the only one that can inspire people beyond their imaginations.  If you want someone else to be sold out on your vision, you’ve got to rely on the wind of the Holy Spirit to spread the fire in your heart to others – it cannot ever be forced on someone.  As Brad Cooper said, “Vision is caught, not taught.”

With that being said, every single person that is involved in one particular ministry MUST be sold on the vision.  When two people are working together but have different goals, it will cause a split.  So many different ministries fall apart because not everyone is sold on one vision, and end up trying to steer it in multiple directions.  “The vision must be identical or it’s ‘double vision,’ which is the same as ‘division,’” Perry Noble said.  When we have double vision, we can’t see straight, depth perception is gone, focus is impossible, and nothing is accomplished.  When we have division, things simply keep getting smaller and smaller, and there are remainders (that in ministry end up being people who need God to speak through you) that we push off to the side.  If we want our ministry to succeed, we have to all be clearly seeing the same goals, be in agreement on how God wants us to get there, and be absolutely zeroed in on our purpose…and when that happens, God makes things bigger and BIGGER and BIGGER and instead of leaving people behind in our hurry to accomplish our own individual passions (see 2 Samuel 4:4 for a Scriptural example) God continually brings people to us so that they can see and be a part of the unifying power of Jesus.